8 ms·

Not saying google isn't a monopoly, it classically is, same with facebook. But I wonder if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after

Not saying google isn't a monopoly, it classically is, same with facebook. But I wonder if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after them. The problem is there are so many oligarchy's controlling industries. Chips, well its a two or three company game(intel, amd, ARM). Lets look at airlines, well its united, delta, american etc. Communications(cell phones), ATT, Verizon, Sprint/Tmobile. America is increasingly becoming a land of large companies controlling industries where the consumer almost always loses, think higher prices due to less competition. I point out google/facebook as they are the only companies in their space (search, social media) that control more than 75% of the space by themselves.

bgorman 6y ago
The government intentionally created the Airline oligopoly by banning foreign airlines from operating domestic flights in the US, and further by allowing United, American and Delta to form joint-ventures with foreign airlines to control prices/schedules between continents. Is Google really a monopoly? Many people use Outlook, iPhones, Apple Maps, AWS, Bing, HERE maps etc...
- jbeam 6y ago
  The antitrust investigation is focused on online advertising. So Outlook, iPhones, maps, AWS doesn't really apply there. "Many people" might use Bing, but Google dwarfs it in market share. I'm not particularly familiar with the infrastructure of the ad business, but my layman's view is that alternatives are slim outside of Google for search engine and the more general web and Facebook for specifically social media.
  - thephyber 6y ago
    > The antitrust investigation is focused on X so Y doesn't really apply there. Antitrust prosecutions are heavily dependent upon shaping the "market" which supposedly is being monopolized. There is no good argument for antitrust against the Apple App Store if the market is "all transactional marketplaces where software can be purchased", but there is a good argument if the market is narrowly defined as "all transactional marketplaces where software can be installed onto iOS mobile devices". Look for similar shaping of the market by both sides (the prosecutor will attempt to narrow the market and the defendants will attempt to broaden the market). Also worth noting that Amazon already chipping away at Google's market share dominance in online advertising[1]. By the time the DOJ's prosecution goes thru the courts, the market is likely to be significantly changed from where it was when AG Sessions (who started these investigations) started crafting an anti-tech-giants strategy. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/amazon-is-eating-into-googles-dominance-in-search-ads.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/amazon-is-eating-into-google...
    - a1369209993 6y ago
      > "all transactional marketplaces where software can be installed onto iOS mobile devices" This is clearly the case though? The App Store doesn't sell, say, Windows software, and iOS devices refuse to run software from (for example) the Google Play store.
      - thephyber 6y ago
        Yes it's clearly the case, but it's not clear that there are any market benefits by the government forcing all app stores to sell all software, irrespective of the platform the software runs on. This would effectively deny all businesses the ability to work just in their niche/forte and destroys the "competitive advantage" (economics term) of most/all businesses.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  Is there something fundamentally wrong with creating the Airline oligopoly though? Maintaining domestic ability for commercial airline traffic seems like a smart idea. Having a singular search and ad network company doesn't.
- olliej 6y ago
  For advertising it is, especially since they were allowed to purchase their only real competitor years ago.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    I think the snarky response here would be “When did Google buy Facebook?” If you’re willing to restrict the scope of the “internet advertising market” to just specifically the things that Google dominates, then duh, Google has total control of “internet advertising”. And yet, there’s another multi-hundred billion dollar company that makes most of its money by advertising on the internet. Scoping markets in this way is nonsense. It a marketer wants to market products on the internet, are they going to put all of their money into Google because it’s the only way to advertise on the internet? Obviously not. And further, therefore there is obviously not a monopoly.
- ghastmaster 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920 Exactly. The Federal government speaks out of both sides of it's mouth. If monopolies fail to spur innovation as is suggested by many, then regulatory burdens such as the Jones Act do even more explicitly.
- subsubzero 6y ago
  Actually its worse that I thought! Google controls 91.89% of the search market [1] G controls 68% of the browser market [2] G's android is on 84% of phones operating systems [3] G has 73% of the search advertising market [4] These numbers are really scary, if you care about fair competition and a just, balanced society. [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-internet-browsers-desktop/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-i... [3] https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433 [4] https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-advertising-market-share/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-a...
jedimastert 6y ago
> Not saying google isn't a monopoly, it classically is Most people I've seen equate monopoly with "95% of people use", which really isn't a monopoly. As far as I'm aware, dominating a market is not the sole criteria of a monopoly (although I am aware it is a sign of successful one, correlation/causation). For someone who doesn't follow this kind of thing, can anyone point to concrete examples of "no other company does this" monopoly or "actively stifling competition" anti-trust practices taken by google without just scoffing and saying its obvious?
- a1369209993 6y ago
  It's a monopoly (or monopsony) if it's prohibitively difficult to function in the market if you refuse to do business with them (or, more commonly unless a regulator is currently assessing monopoly status, they refuse to do business with you). For example, Google doesn't have a monopoly on search; I can use DuckDuckGo just fine (although patent trolling complicates this a bit). Google does, however, have a monopoly on search traffic; if Google delists your site, it has effectively disappeared from 90+% of peoples' (mis-)conception of the internet[1]. A government the purports to support a free market must[0] regulate the latter case. 0: in the sense that not doing so directly communicates that they do not in fact support a free market 1: and this could be true to a lesser degree even if it had only, say, 45% market share Edit: there might also be regulations that should apply to de-facto infrastructure like search engines regardless of monopoly status, but those are, by specification, not based on monopoly status.
  - jedimastert 6y ago
    > Google does, however, have a monopoly on search traffic; if Google delists your site, it has effectively disappeared from 90+% of peoples' (mis-)conception of the internet[1]. A government the purports to support a free market must[0] regulate the latter case. As much people talk about Google's monopoly, I've not seen anyone bring up this point, which is what I was talking about in my previous comment. And I would absolutely agree with you that this could represent an issue of abuse of your position in the market. Would the next step be to prove this abuse occurs? For instance, if I google "maps" I'll get google's maps first, for sure. But I'll also get apple's maps, bing's maps, open map, and mapquest on the first page.
iateanapple 6y ago
> But I wonder if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after them. If Google wasn’t a majority “blue” company they would have been trust busted under Obama.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> But I wonder if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after them. "Majority blue" is in a majority of their employees vote Democrat? That's just what happens when you're headquartered in California, in a metro area, with a workforce that skews younger. I don't think that Google is somehow pushing liberal objectives in a meaningful way.
- thephyber 6y ago
  > I don't think that Google is somehow pushing liberal objectives in a meaningful way. But true or not, it is perceived that way by those who are aggrieved (social conservatives in the USA)... which is what your comment's parent was discussing. I'm not disagreeing with your comment, but you aren't disagreeing with your parent comment either.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Yes it does: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dan-gainor-yes-google-censors-conservatives-even-liberal-journalists-now-admit-it https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dan-gainor-yes-google-censor... A study showed that Google News returned links to CNN vastly more often than links to Fox News, even though Fox News has triple the market share of CNN. See also censoring of YouTube videos: https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-let-google-get-away-with-censorship-11565132175 https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-let-google-get-away-with-c... > How else to explain why Google has restricted more than half of our 15 videos that are pro-Israel—even one by former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper? Google may or may not be doing this intentionally; it may be some byproduct of the algorithm plus unconscious bias from left-leaning Googlers. But the result definitely pushes liberal objectives. Your typical Googler reviewing YouTube videos living somewhere like San Francisco simply isn’t equipped to figure out what is and isn’t within the mainstream of acceptability.
  - mullingitover 6y ago
    Might be based on user preference influencing weighting for search results. I've know I've personally done all I can to block Fox News and other low quality sources from Google News.
adventured 6y ago
> America is increasingly becoming a land of large companies controlling industries where the consumer almost always loses Increasingly? When wasn't that true? You have to go back to pre Civil War, where the economy was heavily geographically split due to movement/transport limitations, which mostly voids the discussion (it was very much a local and regional, agriculture-heavy economy, with limited manufacturing and a very limited consumer goods market as we know it today; not very comparable to anything that exists now). Once you get near to or beyond the Civil War and firmly into the industrial era, the combinations begin essentially immediately and they dominate their segments rapidly. Vanderbilt got so rich by aggressively creating monopolies in his day, in transport. It was far more brutal than anything you can imagine today, in all respects including the options/alternatives that consumers had. From US Steel in 1901 to the few giant railroads to Standard Oil to American Tobacco to the couple remaining giant auto companies (eg GM, Ford, Chrysler) that survived that industry's shakeout in the following decades. Further, you had a small group of industrialists and financiers that cross-controlled everything regardless (and they had few laws limiting their behavior), as with eg Rockefeller heavily dictating terms with the railroads to crush his competition. Leap forward in time: Sears, PAN-AM, IBM, General Electric, General Motors, Ford, AT&T, US Steel, US Rubber, Bethlehem Steel, Armour & Co., Kodak, Polaroid, a very small number of giant media companies like CBS, and so on. Yesterday was dominated entirely by massive corporations. It doesn't matter what decade you select. Whether it's 1910, 1950, 1980, or 2020. It wasn't better in the past. Markets always do this consolidating naturally. Your only option to prevent that is to use the government to prevent or interrupt it.
- rayiner 6y ago
  This is an excellent point. Markets consolidate because mega-corps enjoy massive economies of scale. Do people remember what e-commerce was like before Amazon? You waited a week to get products in the mail. It was Amazon’s massive scale that made next day free shipping possible.
  - artificial 6y ago
    *Free with purchase: There's a membership fee and inflated prices for Prime. I'm glad for the competition since multiple retailers drastically improved their offerings.
jb775 6y ago
> if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after them Certainly can't help them. However, I think that's a moot point if everyone can agree they are the most troublesome company in the "land of large companies". It seems like every few months I see outrage on HN over "Google increased pricing for $X service, but there aren't really any other options" situations.
- thoraway1010 6y ago
  This is such a ridiculous statement. Cable companies have taken billion in federal subsidies, lied about universal deployment and speeds, and unless there is local competition have taken customers to the cleaners, forced the purchase of bundled channel packages, charged rentals for modems they were not renting (I should know - I called in every month to have charge removed) etc. I can think of a long list of other large / monopoly type companies that regular abuse consumers at far higher levels than google does. Consumer spend on google is actually pretty small.
  - jb775 6y ago
    How are the followings stats at all "ridiculous": Google controls 91.89% of the search market [1] G controls 68% of the browser market [2] G's android is on 84% of phones operating systems [3] G has 73% of the search advertising market [4] [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-i.. https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-i.... [3] https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433 [4] https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-a.. https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-a....
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  You spend a lot of time in an echo chamber that specifically like to talk about niche topics and specifically likes to complain about Google. Do you remember the “Google Cloud is getting shut down” hysteria? HN is a bubble.
jorblumesea 6y ago
William Barr is an extremely contentious pick for DOJ. It's hard to understate this. Just read his bio, it's nuts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barr > Barr is a longtime proponent of the unitary executive theory of nearly unfettered presidential authority over the executive branch of the U.S. government. > Barr as attorney general in 1992 authored the report The Case for More Incarceration, where he argued for an increase in the United States incarceration rate > Having criticized the Mueller investigation before taking office, Barr did not recuse himself from overseeing the investigation as attorney general. After receiving Mueller's report he issued a four-page letter to Congress, describing what he said were its principal conclusions, and adding his opinion that the evidence presented did not establish obstruction of justice by Trump. Special counsel Mueller privately responded that Barr's letter had misrepresented the report. > Barr intervened in the criminal case against convicted Trump associate Roger Stone, recommending a lighter sentence for Stone than the career prosecutors who had worked on the case. In May 2020, the Justice Department under Barr announced the dropping of charges against ex-Trump adviser Michael Flynn despite an earlier guilty plea by Flynn, which he later filed to withdraw. So yeah, he's a hatchet man for the president, through and through. This is just revenge for tech's left leaning donations and stance, at the bidding of Trump of course. Big tech has long been in the sights of conservatives and this is just another shot in what's been a growing conflict.
- rayiner 6y ago
  As someone who is on the liberal side on incarceration issues: what does arguing in favor of higher incarceration rights have to do with being a “hatchet man” for the President? Especially when the President in question has made strides in reducing mass incarceration that even Vox had to admit were extremely significant: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/18/18140973/state-of-the-union-trump-first-step-act-criminal-justice-reform https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/18/18140973/state... (
  - jorblumesea 6y ago
    Bush senior was big on incarceration and the war on drugs was a central tenant of his platform. It's pointing out that he [Barr] has a long history of doing what the President wants for political purposes.

bgorman 6y ago

The government intentionally created the Airline oligopoly by banning foreign airlines from operating domestic flights in the US, and further by allowing United, American and Delta to form joint-ventures with foreign airlines to control prices/schedules between continents. Is Google really a monopoly? Many people use Outlook, iPhones, Apple Maps, AWS, Bing, HERE maps etc...

jbeam 6y ago
The antitrust investigation is focused on online advertising. So Outlook, iPhones, maps, AWS doesn't really apply there. "Many people" might use Bing, but Google dwarfs it in market share. I'm not particularly familiar with the infrastructure of the ad business, but my layman's view is that alternatives are slim outside of Google for search engine and the more general web and Facebook for specifically social media.
- thephyber 6y ago
  > The antitrust investigation is focused on X so Y doesn't really apply there. Antitrust prosecutions are heavily dependent upon shaping the "market" which supposedly is being monopolized. There is no good argument for antitrust against the Apple App Store if the market is "all transactional marketplaces where software can be purchased", but there is a good argument if the market is narrowly defined as "all transactional marketplaces where software can be installed onto iOS mobile devices". Look for similar shaping of the market by both sides (the prosecutor will attempt to narrow the market and the defendants will attempt to broaden the market). Also worth noting that Amazon already chipping away at Google's market share dominance in online advertising[1]. By the time the DOJ's prosecution goes thru the courts, the market is likely to be significantly changed from where it was when AG Sessions (who started these investigations) started crafting an anti-tech-giants strategy. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/amazon-is-eating-into-googles-dominance-in-search-ads.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/amazon-is-eating-into-google...
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    > "all transactional marketplaces where software can be installed onto iOS mobile devices" This is clearly the case though? The App Store doesn't sell, say, Windows software, and iOS devices refuse to run software from (for example) the Google Play store.
    - thephyber 6y ago
      Yes it's clearly the case, but it's not clear that there are any market benefits by the government forcing all app stores to sell all software, irrespective of the platform the software runs on. This would effectively deny all businesses the ability to work just in their niche/forte and destroys the "competitive advantage" (economics term) of most/all businesses.
remarkEon 6y ago
Is there something fundamentally wrong with creating the Airline oligopoly though? Maintaining domestic ability for commercial airline traffic seems like a smart idea. Having a singular search and ad network company doesn't.
olliej 6y ago
For advertising it is, especially since they were allowed to purchase their only real competitor years ago.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  I think the snarky response here would be “When did Google buy Facebook?” If you’re willing to restrict the scope of the “internet advertising market” to just specifically the things that Google dominates, then duh, Google has total control of “internet advertising”. And yet, there’s another multi-hundred billion dollar company that makes most of its money by advertising on the internet. Scoping markets in this way is nonsense. It a marketer wants to market products on the internet, are they going to put all of their money into Google because it’s the only way to advertise on the internet? Obviously not. And further, therefore there is obviously not a monopoly.
ghastmaster 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920 Exactly. The Federal government speaks out of both sides of it's mouth. If monopolies fail to spur innovation as is suggested by many, then regulatory burdens such as the Jones Act do even more explicitly.
subsubzero 6y ago
Actually its worse that I thought! Google controls 91.89% of the search market [1] G controls 68% of the browser market [2] G's android is on 84% of phones operating systems [3] G has 73% of the search advertising market [4] These numbers are really scary, if you care about fair competition and a just, balanced society. [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-internet-browsers-desktop/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-i... [3] https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433 [4] https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-advertising-market-share/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-a...

jedimastert 6y ago

> Not saying google isn't a monopoly, it classically is Most people I've seen equate monopoly with "95% of people use", which really isn't a monopoly. As far as I'm aware, dominating a market is not the sole criteria of a monopoly (although I am aware it is a sign of successful one, correlation/causation). For someone who doesn't follow this kind of thing, can anyone point to concrete examples of "no other company does this" monopoly or "actively stifling competition" anti-trust practices taken by google without just scoffing and saying its obvious?

a1369209993 6y ago
It's a monopoly (or monopsony) if it's prohibitively difficult to function in the market if you refuse to do business with them (or, more commonly unless a regulator is currently assessing monopoly status, they refuse to do business with you). For example, Google doesn't have a monopoly on search; I can use DuckDuckGo just fine (although patent trolling complicates this a bit). Google does, however, have a monopoly on search traffic; if Google delists your site, it has effectively disappeared from 90+% of peoples' (mis-)conception of the internet[1]. A government the purports to support a free market must[0] regulate the latter case. 0: in the sense that not doing so directly communicates that they do not in fact support a free market 1: and this could be true to a lesser degree even if it had only, say, 45% market share Edit: there might also be regulations that should apply to de-facto infrastructure like search engines regardless of monopoly status, but those are, by specification, not based on monopoly status.
- jedimastert 6y ago
  > Google does, however, have a monopoly on search traffic; if Google delists your site, it has effectively disappeared from 90+% of peoples' (mis-)conception of the internet[1]. A government the purports to support a free market must[0] regulate the latter case. As much people talk about Google's monopoly, I've not seen anyone bring up this point, which is what I was talking about in my previous comment. And I would absolutely agree with you that this could represent an issue of abuse of your position in the market. Would the next step be to prove this abuse occurs? For instance, if I google "maps" I'll get google's maps first, for sure. But I'll also get apple's maps, bing's maps, open map, and mapquest on the first page.

iateanapple 6y ago

> But I wonder if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after them. If Google wasn’t a majority “blue” company they would have been trust busted under Obama.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> But I wonder if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after them. "Majority blue" is in a majority of their employees vote Democrat? That's just what happens when you're headquartered in California, in a metro area, with a workforce that skews younger. I don't think that Google is somehow pushing liberal objectives in a meaningful way.

thephyber 6y ago
> I don't think that Google is somehow pushing liberal objectives in a meaningful way. But true or not, it is perceived that way by those who are aggrieved (social conservatives in the USA)... which is what your comment's parent was discussing. I'm not disagreeing with your comment, but you aren't disagreeing with your parent comment either.
rayiner 6y ago
Yes it does: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dan-gainor-yes-google-censors-conservatives-even-liberal-journalists-now-admit-it https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dan-gainor-yes-google-censor... A study showed that Google News returned links to CNN vastly more often than links to Fox News, even though Fox News has triple the market share of CNN. See also censoring of YouTube videos: https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-let-google-get-away-with-censorship-11565132175 https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-let-google-get-away-with-c... > How else to explain why Google has restricted more than half of our 15 videos that are pro-Israel—even one by former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper? Google may or may not be doing this intentionally; it may be some byproduct of the algorithm plus unconscious bias from left-leaning Googlers. But the result definitely pushes liberal objectives. Your typical Googler reviewing YouTube videos living somewhere like San Francisco simply isn’t equipped to figure out what is and isn’t within the mainstream of acceptability.
- mullingitover 6y ago
  Might be based on user preference influencing weighting for search results. I've know I've personally done all I can to block Fox News and other low quality sources from Google News.

adventured 6y ago

> America is increasingly becoming a land of large companies controlling industries where the consumer almost always loses Increasingly? When wasn't that true? You have to go back to pre Civil War, where the economy was heavily geographically split due to movement/transport limitations, which mostly voids the discussion (it was very much a local and regional, agriculture-heavy economy, with limited manufacturing and a very limited consumer goods market as we know it today; not very comparable to anything that exists now). Once you get near to or beyond the Civil War and firmly into the industrial era, the combinations begin essentially immediately and they dominate their segments rapidly. Vanderbilt got so rich by aggressively creating monopolies in his day, in transport. It was far more brutal than anything you can imagine today, in all respects including the options/alternatives that consumers had. From US Steel in 1901 to the few giant railroads to Standard Oil to American Tobacco to the couple remaining giant auto companies (eg GM, Ford, Chrysler) that survived that industry's shakeout in the following decades. Further, you had a small group of industrialists and financiers that cross-controlled everything regardless (and they had few laws limiting their behavior), as with eg Rockefeller heavily dictating terms with the railroads to crush his competition. Leap forward in time: Sears, PAN-AM, IBM, General Electric, General Motors, Ford, AT&T, US Steel, US Rubber, Bethlehem Steel, Armour & Co., Kodak, Polaroid, a very small number of giant media companies like CBS, and so on. Yesterday was dominated entirely by massive corporations. It doesn't matter what decade you select. Whether it's 1910, 1950, 1980, or 2020. It wasn't better in the past. Markets always do this consolidating naturally. Your only option to prevent that is to use the government to prevent or interrupt it.

rayiner 6y ago
This is an excellent point. Markets consolidate because mega-corps enjoy massive economies of scale. Do people remember what e-commerce was like before Amazon? You waited a week to get products in the mail. It was Amazon’s massive scale that made next day free shipping possible.
- artificial 6y ago
  *Free with purchase: There's a membership fee and inflated prices for Prime. I'm glad for the competition since multiple retailers drastically improved their offerings.

jb775 6y ago

> if Goog wasn't a majority "blue" company would he aggressively go after them Certainly can't help them. However, I think that's a moot point if everyone can agree they are the most troublesome company in the "land of large companies". It seems like every few months I see outrage on HN over "Google increased pricing for $X service, but there aren't really any other options" situations.

thoraway1010 6y ago
This is such a ridiculous statement. Cable companies have taken billion in federal subsidies, lied about universal deployment and speeds, and unless there is local competition have taken customers to the cleaners, forced the purchase of bundled channel packages, charged rentals for modems they were not renting (I should know - I called in every month to have charge removed) etc. I can think of a long list of other large / monopoly type companies that regular abuse consumers at far higher levels than google does. Consumer spend on google is actually pretty small.
- jb775 6y ago
  How are the followings stats at all "ridiculous": Google controls 91.89% of the search market [1] G controls 68% of the browser market [2] G's android is on 84% of phones operating systems [3] G has 73% of the search advertising market [4] [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-i.. https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-i.... [3] https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16433 [4] https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-a.. https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-a....
dodobirdlord 6y ago
You spend a lot of time in an echo chamber that specifically like to talk about niche topics and specifically likes to complain about Google. Do you remember the “Google Cloud is getting shut down” hysteria? HN is a bubble.

jorblumesea 6y ago

William Barr is an extremely contentious pick for DOJ. It's hard to understate this. Just read his bio, it's nuts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barr > Barr is a longtime proponent of the unitary executive theory of nearly unfettered presidential authority over the executive branch of the U.S. government. > Barr as attorney general in 1992 authored the report The Case for More Incarceration, where he argued for an increase in the United States incarceration rate > Having criticized the Mueller investigation before taking office, Barr did not recuse himself from overseeing the investigation as attorney general. After receiving Mueller's report he issued a four-page letter to Congress, describing what he said were its principal conclusions, and adding his opinion that the evidence presented did not establish obstruction of justice by Trump. Special counsel Mueller privately responded that Barr's letter had misrepresented the report. > Barr intervened in the criminal case against convicted Trump associate Roger Stone, recommending a lighter sentence for Stone than the career prosecutors who had worked on the case. In May 2020, the Justice Department under Barr announced the dropping of charges against ex-Trump adviser Michael Flynn despite an earlier guilty plea by Flynn, which he later filed to withdraw. So yeah, he's a hatchet man for the president, through and through. This is just revenge for tech's left leaning donations and stance, at the bidding of Trump of course. Big tech has long been in the sights of conservatives and this is just another shot in what's been a growing conflict.

rayiner 6y ago
As someone who is on the liberal side on incarceration issues: what does arguing in favor of higher incarceration rights have to do with being a “hatchet man” for the President? Especially when the President in question has made strides in reducing mass incarceration that even Vox had to admit were extremely significant: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/18/18140973/state-of-the-union-trump-first-step-act-criminal-justice-reform https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/18/18140973/state... (
- jorblumesea 6y ago
  Bush senior was big on incarceration and the war on drugs was a central tenant of his platform. It's pointing out that he [Barr] has a long history of doing what the President wants for political purposes.